As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
A group of one or more information handling systems may form an information handling center. An information handling center can occupy one room of a building, one floor, or an entire building, for example. An information handling center may include, for example, a number of servers racked up into 19 inch rack cabinets, often placed in single rows forming corridors between them, which allows human access to the front and rear of each cabinet. Servers differ greatly in size from 1 U servers to very large storage silos. Some equipment such as mainframe computers and storage devices are often as big as the racks themselves.
A 19-inch rack is a standardized system for mounting various electronic modules in a “stack,” or rack that is 19 inches (482.6 mm) wide. Equipment designed to be placed in a rack is typically described as rack-mount, a rack mounted system, a rack mount chassis, subrack, rack mountable, or simply shelf. This standard rack arrangement is widely used throughout the telecommunication, computing, audio, entertainment and other industries.
The physical environment of an information handling center is typically under strict control, especially the temperature within the information handling center. Air conditioning is typically used to control the temperature and humidity in the information handling center. For example, a temperature range of 20-25° C. and humidity range of 40-60% is typically suitable for information handling center conditions. The electrical power used by the electronic equipment is converted to heat, which is transferred to the ambient air in the space near the electronic equipment. Unless the heat is removed, the ambient temperature will rise, which may result in electronic equipment malfunction. By controlling the air temperature of the space, the electronic components may be kept within the manufacturer's specified temperature/humidity range. Air conditioning systems may help control space humidity within acceptable parameters by cooling the return space air below the dew point. A raised floor may be used in order to distribute cooled air within an information handling center.
Information handling centers are typically equipped with a raised floor with vent tiles configured to provide cool air to the information handling systems (e.g., racks) from a pressurized plenum in the space below the raised floor. One system for cooling racks has been suggested before in US Patent Publication No. 2005/0237716 A1, “Air Flow System and Method for Facilitating Cooling of Stacked Electronics Components” where an airflow plenum is added to either and/or the front and rear of a rack. In the case where the plenum is added to the front of the rack, it picks up air from a tile supplying cool air immediately in front of the rack.
These vent tiles are typically unable to vary the airflow dynamically to the information handling center. In addition, the vent tiles typically operate without knowledge of how each vent tile affects information handling systems in its proximity. This may have unintended consequences, e.g., inadequate airflow delivery to the racks and/or wasted energy consumption, which may lead to inefficiencies in both cooling of the information handling systems as well as in the operations of air conditioning units.
It is desirable to distribute air having a controlled temperature to information handling systems, such as for example racks. This may avoid too high or too low ambient air temperatures of a rack. Reducing or minimizing chilled air consumption is beneficial, e.g., to lower operating costs of an information handling center. In addition, reducing the total flow of air in a raised floor and/or air conditioned room may lower running costs.
Reduced airflow consumption in rack products, especially servers, is typically desirable, as facility electricity devoted to cooling can be substantial. In a typical chilled water facility, for example, where large air handling units (AHU) pressurize a raised floor, energy is used by the AHU to transport chilled air to the server and heated air back from the server. Energy is also used remotely at the chiller plant to chill water for use around the facility, at the outside condenser for ultimate heat rejection, and for transporting fluid (generally water) to and from the chiller and condenser. As the AHU uses energy to move air, it also adds heat to the facility which must also be removed through the chiller and condenser. The open raised floor environment is often accompanied by a large over-provisioning of AHU's due to poor and unpredictable airflow dynamics that create hot spots. Many data centers end up over-provisioning to cool these hot spots and/or spend much more energy than needed in chilling the air to temperatures lower than necessary.